Tag: market

Urban sketching is about recording great stories in our sketchbooks! And what better way to tell a story than by the people that live them. Thanks to the Urban Sketchers Liguria, Genova will be full of sketchers, workshops and exhibitions from the 22nd to the 30th of June. My contribution to the event is a people sketching workshop in Mercato Orientale.

In the Local Markets, Great People sketching workshop, we will see the Mercato Orientale from the viewpoint of the great people working and living in it. We will focus on generic people sketching, close-up features, postures and actions, and architecture as a stage for the people’s stories.
Whether they are the local grocer, the coffee maker, the kids playing or the granma shopping, all stories matter, if we aim to tell the stories of the world, one sketch at a time.

The goals of the workshop are to:

Learn how to quickly capture a crowd of people in an urban (indoors or outdoors) setting;

The traffic was unusually chaotic, and I arrived late in the location. So the first warm up exercise was assigned as homework. In the first part of the challenge – “get up stand up, stand up for your crowd” – we were to sketch a crowd in 15 minutes while standing, by hanging people by the head from an imaginary tight rope that we’d call horizon. This technique guarantees that the scene is coherent and every person that we sketch falls into place naturally. The second part of the exercise – “everybody in the house get down” – was to do the same thing while sitting or crouching. This time, people should be hung by the waistline, guaranteeing the same results as before.

We jumped directly to the second exercise, which put everyone in contact with a single local profession. Participants had to choose one of the many available professions on site – a trader, a security guard, a hauler – and, in a single spread, separately sketch the head of the professional, his/her hands, the product/service, the hands of the receiver/customer and his/her head. This would focus all sketching attention on the main elements of a trade or a transaction. Head-expression, hands-action and product/service provided as the element that brings those people together.

Besides the traditional fishmongers and grocers you usually find in local markets, a big feature of this one is the food kiosks and dining area. This was the stage for the third exercise – participants had to follow a meal from its origin to its disposal, focusing on the people that cook it, season it, serve it, purchase it, eat it, and, of course, the people that clean after it. Placement on the spread didn’t matter, as long as you could trace the route of the food across all the people involved. Some really interesting layouts came out of this challenge, as breaking down a story in acts or moments allows for simplification in sketching technique and prompts innovation in the composition.